


Energy Drinks

by keircatenation



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fanart, Femslash Exchange 2018, boxing au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 15:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16200263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keircatenation/pseuds/keircatenation
Summary: Prompt: Modern AU, Sakura is a boxer and Hinata is her biggest fan.





	Energy Drinks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RowynSN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowynSN/gifts).



> I felt much more confident drawing these ladies than I did writing them, but I hope you like both the art and the short fic, RowynSN! I kind of smushed a few of your prompts together (with a dash of Ino and Sakura as rivals/best friends) and kind of sketched out an AU for it.
> 
> (and mea culpa, I don't know much about boxing except what I could absorb in a few days. I hope the faults aren't too egregious!)

 

\--

When Hyuuga Hinata was a teenager, she was in love with the boy next door. Literally, because Naruto's house was right next to hers. (If you can really count the mansions of the Hyuga and Namikaze families as houses, since they both had driveways half a mile long. Lawyers and politicians made a lot of money in Konoha.) Naruto was like the sunshine, and not just because he had bright yellow hair. His smile lit up the room and he always had encouraging words for everyone. Hinata was shy when she was young, and she absorbed the encouragement like a flower opening to the sun.

Naruto didn't really understand her feelings for him, Hinata assumes now. He didn't have many real friends, despite his sunny nature, and he had even fewer girls interested in him. Maybe he did realize the enormity of Hinata's crush on him and just tried to ignore it as he crushed on his own boy. Either way, Naruto treated Hinata as a friend and nothing more, but at least he let her spend time around him, so she ended up tagging along to a lot of clubs and after-school activities with him.

Through Naruto, Hinata was introduced to many things: parkour, gymnastics, pranking, skateboarding, soccer - and also _boxing_.

The combination of aggression and intellect needed to be a good boxer surprised Hinata. Her parents had never encouraged her to be anything other than a calm, demure young lady (end even discouraged her from acting otherwise), but the sudden attacks and grunts of pain from the boxers in the ring interested her in a way nothing else did. The way the boxers circled around each other and then darted in to take the opponent down as quickly as possible was mesmerizing.

Years later, Hinata's long since gotten over her crush on the boy next door, but the love she has for boxing hasn't changed.

\--

Haruno Sakura was a very aggressive child. She ran around, yelled, got into fights with other children when they picked on her, and nothing seemed to help. Her parents lectured her, tried to bribe her, punished her, even tried ignoring it in case it was all just a cry for attention. Things finally came to a head when Sakura and Ino (a girl the Harunos had thought was their daughter's friend!) were both sent to the nurse's office sporting black eyes and bloody noses. Both of them were suspended for three days for fighting.

If Umino Iruka hadn't stopped the Harunos as they left and recommended that they try enrolling Sakura in combat sports, they'd have gone spare with worry. As it was, the teacher reassured them that this sort of thing could happen when children weren't given appropriate outlets for energy, and he recommended the Hatake Academy, which taught a range of combat sports.

Sakura wasn't at all convinced, because she hated looking ugly in front of the other kids in gym class (it just made them bully her more), but she went along with her parents because Ino wasn't talking to her because of the black eye. Thirty seconds in the doors of Hatake Academy, Sakura saw a tiny girl flip a guy twice her size over her hip and pin him to the mat ruthlessly as the referee for their match counted down the pin. Sakura watched with wide eyes, mouth open. All worries about looking ugly flew out of her head; that girl hadn't looked ugly.

She looked _spectacular_.

And Sakura wanted that, like breathing.

Years later, Sakura's transitioned from judo throws to boxing punches, but she's still the strongest person in any room that she steps into.

\--

The first time Hinata saw Haruno Sakura box, it was a televised match of the national championships that's playing in the background of the sports club that she still went to when she wanted to hang out with Naruto and his friends. She was old enough to be over her crush on Naruto, so it wasn't painful to see him try to catch Uchiha Sasuke's attention every second of the day, but still quiet, so it was easier to watch the TV when she got bored of listening to Naruto's attempts at flirting than it was to go and find someone else to talk to.

A match was on between a girl with yellow hair drawn up in spiky ponytails and a shorter girl with - was that _pink_ hair? It looked like the girl with pink hair was winning, and after a moment of watching the match, Hinata knew why: she punched hard. The other boxer was quicker, but when the girl with pink hair landed a hit, it was devastating.

A moment later, and Hinata had the boxer's name: Haruno Sakura, who had just won the Hi no Kuni Youth Boxing Championship for her first time. From the look on her face, Hinata guessed it wouldn't be her last.

\--

The first time Sakura saw Hyuuga Hinata, it was after a charity boxing match in Konoha against Yamanaka Ino, her childhood best friend and rival who had grown up into a boxer as well, even if she'd had different teachers. Sakura walked out of the locker room to greet her fans, and Hinata was at the front of the crowd. Sakura couldn't say for sure what Hinata had been wearing, or even who else was there, but the blush on her cheeks and the wide grin on her face took Sakura's breath away.

And Hinata didn't leave her any time to recover, since Hinata thrust a bottle of Sakura's favorite energy drink at her, congratulated her on the performance, and then ran off. Sakura stared after her for as long as she could, until Ino threw an arm around her shoulders and drew her into greeting their fans together. Sakura kept clutching the energy drink throughout the night and took it home to put in her fridge. Maybe it was stupid to keep food given to her by a strange fan, but the seal on the bottle wasn't tampered with. Sakura didn't even drink it for a week, when she ran out of her usual stash of energy drinks. Every time she looked at the bottle, she thought about her fan's wide smile and pink blush and her own cheeks heated up.

When she finally drank it, Sakura thought that would probably be the end of it, since she wouldn't have the bottle to remind her of the woman anymore, and it wasn't likely that some random boxing fan would continue to come to Sakura's matches. No matter how excited she seemed to be to meet Sakura. It just wasn't likely, with how much Sakura traveled for her sport.

And then the fan showed up again. And again. And again. Each time, she gave Sakura a bottle of her energy drink, a cute smile, some words of congratulations, and then left. On the third time, Sakura got her name out of her. On the seventh, she chased after Hinata in order to exchange phone numbers. On the eighteenth, after months of texting and Skype sessions in between in-person meetings, Sakura asked her out for a date.

\--

Hinata, of course, said yes.

**Author's Note:**

> If you can't see the artwork or it's formatted weirdly, [ [here's a link to it.](https://66.media.tumblr.com/4e315eb67b812f57efdf931e92159f6b/tumblr_pg4v1zTT1I1rrfgm0o1_1280.jpg) ]


End file.
